Life Below The Galapagos, Part 1

The following is the first of

When geologists first went down to this active volcanic region 250 miles east of the Galapagos Islands, they hoped to find areas where cold ocean water mixed in hot magma-chambers to produce mineral-rich water. They found much more: the super-heated vents they discovered supported a rich effusion of life. The discovery shock established views about the frigid ocean deep once believed uninhabitable. How could gigantic strange red tubeworms be thriving in the pitch dark world without sun-produced food? How could foot-long giant clams, starfish, crabs, and bizarre fish survive in chemicals once thought toxic to all life?

Based on Alvin's dives on the Galapagos Rift and at other geothermal vent sites, scientists have put forth revolutionary views on the origins of life. As the search for life on other planets continues, scientists now know there is "chemosynthetic" life on Earth. Here, microbes thrive on hydrogen sulfide which is toxic to humans. The expedition we're on returns the Alvin sub and scientists to the Galapagos Rift, to visit a newly formed colony emerging over a recent lava-flow: "Rosebud." They tell me that as a "member of the science party" I may see this miracle of life with my own eyes.

Prelude

This weekend, before the trip of a lifetime I'll be telling you about, I went back to my roots: to the old neighborhood that got me started in this crazy business. I took my kids to Coney Island, where I grew up, across the street from the Boardwalk, the Cyclone, and the Atlantic Ocean. This pilgrimage was different than the ones my kids were used to: this time, no Nathan's hot dogs, no nauseating rides on the ramshackle Ferris Wheel, or collisions on rusting bumper cars.

Instead, we headed back to find a monument to exploration that has woefully been out of the public eye: the Bathysphere. The steel sphere, once the star attraction of the 1939 World's Fair, has been hidden from view for a decade. Dr. William Beebe and Otis Barton, two courageous scientist-madmen, set the world's record for undersea exploration in 1932 in this hand-cast tribute to claustrophobia; they volunteered to drop by cable 3,028 feet below the waves. What they saw (or claimed to have seen) is still debated by oceanographers and ichthyologists to this day. Some of the strange deep-sea creatures have been identified (black anglerfish with glowing nose lures, for example.) Other fish Barton claimed to have discovered still remain unidentified to this day.

The Bathysphere could barely contain the lanky bodies of Beebe and his high-strung patron Barton. Inside, the steel sphere was cold and wet from condensation; stuffed with oxygen canisters and trays of chemicals to remove moisture and carbon dioxide, plus lights and primitive electronics; all crammed into the small 4-foot wide interior. Three small porthole windows in the front and a hatch wrenched shut with fifteen huge bolts: risky barriers holding back the enormous pressure of the sea during descents.

When I was a child, the home of the Bathysphere was the New York Aquarium, where, slathered in blue paint, it stood in a place of honor. I frequently could be found staring with wonder and horror at this tribute to man's foolhardiness. Every observer would recognize that risking life in this rusting clunky dollop of metal, suspended by a fraying cable thousands of feet into the deepest ocean was perilous at best. There it stood for many years, a few hundred feet from my home, daring me to risk something. It was my touchstone: proof of the triumph of discovery over fear. For the last decade, the Bathysphere was put away in a storage yard in the shadow of the Cyclone. Recently it was stripped of paint and rust and moved to some indoor storage site. I needed to find the Bathysphere again, to show it to my children, to help explain my imminent departure.

A note about growing up in Coney Island: if you think of New York City as a centrifuge, with Manhattan whirling in the center, then think of the crazy far-flung stuff at the edges as Coney Island. A freak show may begin near the Amusement Park but it clearly has spilled over to the Boardwalk and beaches: bearded ladies, dwarfs, carnies, and hoodlums. The winter-swimmers in the "Polar Bear" club and the Mermaid Parade join masses of the retired, professional sun tanners, and armies of the unemployed. My memories were of ancient men playing vicious handball or Spanish voices on loudspeakers hawking "Bumpah cahs ... Bumpah cahs ..." late into the night. The night punctuated with the rumble, roar, and screech of elevated F and D trains converging to terminate at the Coney Island train yards. Whimsical melodies of spinning rides and flipping rides repeated endlessly; the rat-a-tat-tat of the rickety Cyclone cars grinding to the top, before the inevitable release on steel rails ... creaking wood and late night screams again and again. Every visitor to Coney Island has those sounds (and more) tattooed in their memory.

But the true musical score, enjoyed by that special breed of Coney Island native, features a more subtle melody: the maw and cry of seagulls, the rhythmic crash of surf, and the bizarre wakeup sound of bellowing sea lions in the aquarium. These sounds, augmenting the spray of the ocean and the faint perfume of fish and tanning oil, baking under the unobstructed sun, synthesize an aroma that lures me again to the ocean. It erodes the logical barrier even the child has contemplating the perilous Bathysphere; transforming fear into an overwhelming need to get in it... calling us to be lowered to ocean depths... to see if we can gaze upon strange fish and stranger life under the sea.

So, returning to the Aquarium, to somehow find the Bathysphere long disappeared in storage somewhere, may seem a futile quest, particularly on a Sunday, when bureaucratic inertia is most entrenched. But it was no surprise to me that somehow my kids and I should find three workmen planning out the long-awaited display site where the Bathysphere would one day return. It was no less remarkable to me that one of the workmen had a key and happily took us a quarter of a mile away to a darkened warehouse. There, amidst junk and old garden supplies, Barton and Beebe's Bathysphere stands: naked of paint; cleaned of rust, almost shining as it must have been before the New York Zoological Society and National Geographic Society had their names emblazoned on the bizarre craft for the first time.

For me, it was a wonderful reunion. For my children, somewhat of a puzzle. I could see they still could not fathom why man would risk being dropped in such a small chamber to the depths of the sea. Perhaps they needed more exposure to the elixir of the rhythmic sea, perhaps the perfume of the mist, perhaps the insistent cries of gulls and bellows of sea lions in the morning.

For me, the Bathysphere is where it all began: my crazy idea to visit the other world under the sea. This is where I'm heading now: aboard a plane flying to Miami and then to Costa Rica, to the harbor. There, I join the crew of Woods Hole's research ship, Atlantis, for the beginning of a scientific cruise that will take us to the Galapagos Rift, to the site of Rose Garden. In the deep-water submersible Alvin, I'll follow the ranks of other fortunates who have gazed upon geothermal vents and the unworldly life below.